[WARNING: The following contains spoilers from Sunday's Game of Thrones' episode, "Breaker of Chains." Read at your own risk.]

Of all the troubled relationships on Game of Thrones, Cersei (Lena Headey) and Jaime Lannister's (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) incestuous relationship is probably one of the most disturbing. But the HBO series took it to new heights during Sunday's "Breaker of Chains" by including a scene in which Jaime rapes Cersei next to the cold, dead body of their son Joffrey.

George R.R. Martin, who wrote the Song of Ice and Fire books on which the series is based, has responded on his blog to the deafening outcry from fans upset by the difference between page and screen.

"In the novels," he explained, "Jaime is not present at Joffrey's death, and indeed, Cersei has been fearful that he is dead himself, that she has lost both the son and the father/ lover/ brother. And then suddenly Jaime is there before her. Maimed and changed, but Jaime nonetheless. Though the time and place is wildly inappropriate and Cersei is fearful of discovery, she is as hungry for him as he is for her."

Martin goes on to say that since Jaime has been back for several weeks in the show's timeline, "neither character is in the same place as in the books, which may be why Dan [Weiss] & David [Benioff] played the sept [scene] out differently. But that's just my surmise; we never discussed this scene, to the best of my recollection."

He also notes that the scene was originally written from Jaime's point of view, but because of the nature of TV, viewers are not privy to either character's inner thoughts and feelings. "If the show had retained some of Cersei's dialogue from the books, " Martin said, " it might have left a somewhat different impression -- but that dialogue was very much shaped by the circumstances of the books, delivered by a woman who is seeing her lover again for the first time after a long while apart during which she feared he was dead. I am not sure it would have worked with the new timeline."